There were 69,756 people in the stands for the last most important home football game in Temple history, the 27-10 win over Penn State on 9/5/15.

There will be roughly–give or take a couple thousand–22,646 announced for Temple’s next most important game, vs. Akron, in less than two months, 9/2/23.

Hopefully, the brain trust in the coaching room at the Edberg-Olson Complex is paying attention. Hopefully, they have been paying attention.

This will be the ultimate Xs and O’s vs. Jimmy and Joe’s game.

It might be more important than Penn State because the Owls are coming off a couple of 3-9 seasons after a decade of restoring respect for the program.

Beat Akron and hope springs eternal. Losing to Arkon and another 3-9 (or worse) seems unavoidable.

As a Temple fan, I’m very confident that the team wearing Cherry and White that day will have a significant advantage in Jimmy and Joe’s department.

The X’s and O’s?

I wish I could say I’m not sure but am fairly confident that the Akron coaching staff has that edge.

What makes me say that?

Akron’s head coach, Joe Moorhead, has already beaten better Temple players with worse players and a better head coach, Matt Rhule, than anyone Temple has seen since, arguably, Al Golden.

With gosh-darn Fordham football talent. That should set off all kinds of wake-the-bleep-up calls in the E-O.

Don’t fool yourself. He can beat Stan Drayton.

Will he?

Not if the defensive brain trust is studying the pin-and-pull offense.

Do I have confidence new defensive coordinator Everett Withers is in the film room studying Akron’s offense like Moorhead is studying Temple’s defense?

Hell no.

Unless he proves otherwise, Withers to me to a skate-through-life guy and Moorhead is a nose-to-the-grindstone guy. Withers hasn’t stopped any modern offense recently on a consistent basis, but Moorhead’s schemes have confused a more talented team more than once. Withers hasn’t shut out a college football offense as a sole DC in this century and he’s had a whole lot of chances. The evidence shows the opposite. Opponents pretty much have scored at will against Withers’ defenses. This is something Drayton has to take responsibility for since it’s his hire.

The pin-and-pull has been Moorhead’s bread and butter at Fordham, Penn State, and Mississippi State even before he got to Akron.

That’s a Moorhead staple and it’s been since he used it to befuddle a Phil Snow-led Temple defense.

Everyone on the Temple fandom side is going to approach this game like it’s going to be a 34-7 Temple win. Not me. Don’t fall into that trap. Temple is a 10-point favorite and Vegas is usually pretty good. On top of that, Moorhead’s offense is usually OK so I’m thinking somewhere near 31-21 Temple if everything goes right.

History is always a good teacher, though. In 2016, the Owls did not do their homework and came away with an opening-night loss to Army.

You had nine months to prepare for a triple-option offense and the best Snow could do that night was leave the A-gap open for the Army fullback and he gouged the Owls for 134 yards. By the time he inserted Averee Robinson in the game as a nose guard with 8;32 left in the fourth quarter it was too late.

Now the Owls have to be ready for the pin-and-pull.

Studying the Akron film should have been part of every Temple coaching meeting so far. If it hasn’t, there is still enough time.

Temple’s superior Jimmy’s and Joe’s deserve that much.

Monday: What if “they” are right?

The odds came out this week for the first college football weekend of the year.

Temple opened as a 10-point favorite over visiting Akron in the opener and that immediately dropped to nine the next day.

While it’s nice that Vegas set the Owls as a double-digit favorite, the public wasn’t buying it.

The old cliche is that your most important game is your next one is especially true about Temple hosting Akron this season.

If the Owls win, they are off and running and probably bowl-bound.

If they lose, some serious questions arise about whether they will be 3-9 for the third-straight season. Or whether they have the right leadership going forward.

Make no mistake about it. Akron CAN beat Temple.

Whether it will or not is another question.

Put it this way. The Akron team facing Temple in 2023 will be a lot more formidable one than the Akron team that lost to Rod Carey in the otherwise forgettable 2021 season, 45-24.

First, the Zips have a big-time coach in Joe Moorhead. There is no question he can beat Stan Drayton because he took lesser talent and beat an objectively better coach than Drayton (Matt Rhule) in 2013 when he took an FCS Fordham team into Temple and came away with a win.

Since then, Moorhead became a head coach in the Power 5 (Mississippi State) before Drayton did and fell victim to the unreasonable expectations that come with P5 fan bases.

Last year, in his first one at Akron, his team got better as the season went on and it finished with a 44-12 thumping of a Northern Illinois team and almost beat a better Buffalo team the next week, losing by just a point. That Buffalo team finished 7-6 and beat Georgia Southern, 23-21, in the Camellia Bowl. (Yes, the same Georgia Southern that beat Rhule’s current Nebraska team earlier in the season.)

Here’s why I think Temple will win. Akron needed overtime to beat St. Francis last year and St. Francis lost to a Lafayette team Temple hammered, 30-14. Also, the Houston and ECU teams Temple hung with in the latter half of the season were probably significantly better than Buffalo and NIU. Probably, but I don’t know for sure.

Not much evidence to go on since both the learning curves for Temple and Akron went up significantly as the season progressed.

Not enough evidence to bet the house and farm on the Owls so they have to make sure they cross the I’s and dot the T’s on a solid game plan over the next three months. The first film to dissect is the Fordham at Temple film of 2013.

The Owls will have to make sure they are ready for everything and anything Moorhead will throw at them and, hopefully, they did not bury that game film.

Monday: What’s The Deal?